


comfort for monsters

by inK_AddicTion



Series: Age of Rust [3]
Category: Guardians of Childhood - Fandom, rise of the guardians
Genre: Gatekeeper AU, M/M, from my gatekeeper verse, i guess knowledge of it is not strictly needed but it'd probably help you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 10:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6701908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inK_AddicTion/pseuds/inK_AddicTion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kozmotis reassures Pitch after a bad nightmare. -crossposted from my tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	comfort for monsters

Pitch started awake, breath hoarse and rasping in his throat. His body was stiff, tense shudders working through clenching muscles, horrified eyes pinned to the ceiling. His heart thumped rabbit’s foot fast, sweat gleaming on his forehead. He was at once feverishly warm and chilly. The jagged claws of the nightmare held him pinned, keeping the animal howls that wanted to break free inside his throat through dint of much practice.

It was still dark, shadows seeping in through the cracks in the shutters, painting monochrome lines across the sparsely furnished room, gleaming across the white sheets. Dead silence hung low and heavy, disturbed by the soft rustlings of leaves outside the small cabin, the snuffles of nighttime animals. There was the rush of wings and a quiet lowing cry that reminded him of grief.

Pitch clenched sweaty palms in the sheets and closed his eyes on the tears that stung, threatened to fall. His chest jerked in misery, and his breath rattled in his lungs, hiccuping on something that sounded like sobs. Furiously, he turned his head to the side, glaring at the wall as if it could forestall the emotions he couldn’t help but perceive as weakness.

There was a pair of muddy boots kicked off nonchalantly by the scratched pine door, a banged up dresser with nails hammered in unevenly, a drawer gaping open in the gloom. Neatly split down the middle, one side overflowed with unfolded clothes stacked haphazardly atop one another, the other military neat, folded so sharply the edges looked enough to cut. A small, sanded bowl was on top of the dresser, a few choice fruits left inside. A candle, extinguished, stood sentinel in its pot of wax.

The shutters had been left slightly ajar to compensate for the damp, muggy spring air, and a kiss of breeze ruffled the sweat-slick hair from Pitch’s forehead. The covers were rumpled down to his waist, baring his skinny chest, twisted up in the baggy shirt he wore to bed, revealing slender hips and jutting bones.

He sat up, slowly, being careful not to waken the other occupant of the bed. Undisturbed, Koz slept on, brows pulled down in some uneasy wandering. Nonetheless he didn’t seem too unhappy, so Pitch didn’t bother to interfere. He’d probably make it worse.

With cautious ease, Pitch slipped out of the bed and padded soundlessly to the window, grimacing as his bare feet touched the cold wooden floor. He was aware of the hems of the shirt tickling his thighs and sliding off one shoulder as he walked, but couldn’t bring himself to care. It was one of Koz’s – they were always too big for him, anyway. Pitch might have been taller, but Koz was definitely stockier.

Deftly, he opened the shutters and pressed his forehead to the wooden ridge of the frame, staring out into the night and breathing in the fresh air. It chilled the sweat on his body quickly, and he shivered. His night vision adjusted supremely swiftly, and easily he could distinguish the lumpy shapes of their garden, the rickety fence around it and the tall, shaggy trees surrounding them like a wooded embrace. If he shifted his head, he could look up, to the glacial points of the stars, studded palely in a carpet of black. It was always so clear and bright from here.

Something dim and faint touched Pitch’s lips at the memory of countless nights spent under the stars on the little hill a half-mile from the cabin, lying on their backs in the diamond dew grass while Koz named constellations until his voice became rough and hoarse and Pitch couldn’t resist kissing him any longer. They’d picnicked there too, on the clear, summery days when the skies were warm and didn’t promise rain. Flowers grew on that hill at this time of year, until the perfume of crushed flora surrounded them, the sun shining down warmly on Pitch’s back as he straddled Koz, just a shade too hot and prickling to ever be really comfortable, but distracted enough by the man beneath him that it was no issue.

The pleasant memories were a balm against the raging tide of anger and pain that still battered at his heart in the darkness, and Pitch watched the night like a predator, one arm folded over his stomach as if he could force all the cut-glass feelings back inside. His emotions were raw, sharp, tumultuous, tempest tossed in the hellish maelstrom left behind by the nightmare. His skin itched and crawled as if it were diseased.

 _But it is diseased,_ he thought bitterly, glancing down to his hand – stone-grey, dipped tar-black in the midnight. He clenched his fist, overcome by a repulsion so vast it threatened to make him sick.

The words from his nightmare bounced around in his skull like an overturned hornet’s nest, buzzing and stinging and catching in the still-soft ( _weak)_ parts of him. _Monster!_ They screamed, taloned fingers pointing like the _thump_ of dark arrows and spears of jagged ice-sculptures. Old memories, painful memories. He’d not had a visit from them in too long, it seemed.

His position tightened, Pitch curling in on himself in shame. His eyes pricked hotly again, and he swallowed past a lump in his throat. “Weak,” he whispered into the silent, observant darkness. “Look what you’ve become.”  
“Pitch?” Rough and sleep-blurred, it gave Pitch a shock. He startled, clawed hand scarring the frame of the window with deep gouges Koz would no doubt tut at in the morning. He was obscenely proud of the stupid frame, having put it up himself. He whirled around guiltily.

Koz was half-sat up, the gleam of his tired, but open, eyes visible in the dim light. His hair was mussed up in a truly spectacular bedhead, spikes of dark hair flying everywhere without a care for the laws of physics. The covers fell loosely around his stomach, warm and toned, and Pitch’s mouth dried as Koz yawned and stretched, the definition of his bare muscles highlighted in a way that Pitch felt was very unfair indeed.

Pitch might have worn a shirt to bed, but Koz did not, a fact that Pitch was unable to tell if it was a blessing or curse. Certainly, a curse, when he woke up at odd hours of the night, unable to fall back to sleep because he was so thoroughly distracted by the slumbering man beside him, albeit a blessing in the morning, when Koz cuddled Pitch into wakefulness, rising with the sun as Koz always did.

“Go back to sleep,” he whispered, heart-in-mouth. For a moment Koz stared at him blearily, and Pitch had hope that he’d obey and leave Pitch to his depressing solitude.

But then Koz snorted and swung his legs out of the bed, lumbering to his feet like a great, sleepy bear, and hissing a curse at the chill. “Close the damn shutters,” he mumbled, “and come here.”

“Koz- I’m fine, honestly,” Pitch said, with his best smile, unseen in the dark. Koz’s night vision wasn’t half as excellent as Pitch’s, and he banged his hip on the dresser as he passed it, pausing to let out a torrid stream of curses that mildly impressed Pitch.

“Fuck,” he said, for good measure, glaring heftily at the dresser. Vainly, he scanned the dark room, but even silhouetted by the faint light coming in from the window, Pitch was almost invisible, the darkness blurring the lines of his form like a soft eraser. “Come here,” he repeated, with more steel, and saw a tremor run through the vague dark shape that was Pitch as he fought with himself – or rather, fought with his ridiculous pride.

Finally, Pitch seemed to make a decision, and Koz stood there awkwardly in the dark as Pitch all but vanished into it. Pitch stepped away from the light of the window, the catlike gleam of his golden eyes the only tell of his presence, slinking slowly towards Koz. No matter how long they lived together, Koz knew he would always feel a frisson of unease at these moments, dark, surrounded by Pitch’s element, with Koz clad only in a pair of pants and armed with nothing but his trust. They both knew the pinpricks of alarm were involuntary, and Koz rather thought Pitch enjoyed the reaction. No doubt it was a soothing balm to his affronted pride after a particularly bad nightmare.

Helplessly, Koz waited until Pitch’s hand tentatively touched his forearm, alerting him to his proximity. Then he moved, so swiftly as to deliberately catch Pitch off guard, catching him around his slender hips and pulling him close, one hand reaching up to rub soothing circles into Pitch’s back. The knobbles of his vertebrae bumped underneath Koz’s fingers as he exerted more pressure, Pitch’s back bowing as he sighed at the forceful caress.

Pitch was tall enough that Koz could lay his cheek on the sharp knife of Pitch’s shoulder, turning his face into Pitch’s neck and lightly pulling the skin between his teeth, a small smile on his lips as his shoulders, permanently scarred by now from far too much attention from Pitch’s teeth whilst in the throes of passion, throbbed in sympathy. He kissed the tiny bites immediately afterwards, as if to push gentleness into that taut bundle of broken bones and old unhealed scars left to fester.

Sagging into his arms, Pitch let Koz hold in up, sharp nails digging into Koz’s shoulders, relearning his own favourite scars by the bumps of ragged scar tissue under his fingertips. He was uncharacteristically tender – normally after these nightmares, Pitch was all snapping teeth and clawing hands that had to be wrestled to the floor and pinned, rough and violent and bucking until Koz could ride out the worst of his energy and he invariably submitted, baring his throat to be bitten and kissed with a touch too much eagerness that made false his earlier fights.

It must have been an awful one, this time, thought Koz, to make Pitch seek comfort willingly.

“Come on,” he said, and tugged Pitch toward the bed, until their knees bumped it and they were forced to sit. At once, Pitch crawled onto his lap, stabbing his thigh with a protruding hipbone and contorting himself to nuzzle his head under Koz’s chin. Amused by the whimsy, Koz continued his gentle rubbing, one arm loosely linking around his waist. “What was it this time?” Koz prompted.

For the longest time, Pitch remained silent, kept quiet from lingering trauma or embarrassment, Koz wasn’t sure. When he finally spoke, it was in such a meek tone that Koz immediately understood the cause of his reticence. “…Antartica,” whispered Pitch, as if in deep shame, and Koz cupped his cheek as Pitch’s face flamed.

Koz held in a chuckle. It wasn’t funny, he knew it wasn’t, especially when the flinching, raw moment when Pitch had laid himself most vulnerable in the vain, desperate hope to receive a friend had been so cruelly denied, carving scars in his psyche they were still working out to this day, but Pitch’s discomfort never lessened when the subject of the illusive boy, Jack Frost, was raised, and he always avoided Koz’s eyes like he had a dirty secret. The poor man couldn’t be any more obvious about the old crush, but Koz didn’t judge him for it – he was secure enough to know that even if the old flame (or rather, the old chill?) had miraculously made his way to Pitch and thrown himself at him, Pitch would likely turn him away. Even if he didn’t, it wasn’t as if Koz hadn’t slipped himself once or twice. (That wasn’t to say that Pitch wouldn’t receive a particularly rough few nights, just so he would remember why he was Koz’s _only_.)

Patiently he waited, leaving it open. Sometimes Pitch talked, and talked and talked, until the scene of the nightmare was so vividly scoured into Koz’s mind eye that he swore he’d seen it before. Sometimes he was silent. Sometimes he cried.

Koz hated it when he cried.

Pitch could never do anything like a normal person – Koz wouldn’t stay with him if he did, but in crying Koz almost wished that he was a bit more familiar. Pitch wept liquid darkness that carved tracks down his cheeks and itched and stung whenever it splashed onto Koz’s skin, occasionally staining. He was utterly silent, and tended to curl up on himself, solitary, not expecting any comfort. What was worse, once Pitch had cried himself to exhaustion, the darkness released by his tears became animate, and burrowed its way back into his skin like gnawing maggots. It was both hideous and piteous, not even to mention the emotional agony of seeing one he loved so glassy and dead. It took a lot to make Pitch Black himself cry and when he did, the full force and rage of Kozmotis Pitchiner swiftly followed.

“What happened?” he asked, steadily, and ignoring the question, Pitch threw himself off Koz’s lap and presumably sprawled over the bed, the chinks of pale light shining through the shutters illuminating stripes of his flesh, a thin grey thigh, the concave stomach and the bony rise of a rib just visible where his shirt had ridden up. A spidery hand irritably pulled the hem down and Pitch pulled his knees to his chest.

Breathing an inaudible sigh of frustration, Koz settled down behind Pitch patiently. He kicked off the tangles of the covers and slipped an arm around Pitch’s waist, pressing his chest to Pitch’s back. Pitch clutched his arm, suddenly desperate, and Koz winced as his sharp claws dug in. Pitch exhaled shakily, and for one dreadful moment Koz thought he would cry.

Evidently Pitch mastered himself, however, because when he turned his head to look at Koz, his shining gold eyes were bright, but clear. Koz kissed his cheek, grinning against Pitch’s skin when he felt slender legs entangling with his. He kissed his way down to the nape of Pitch’s neck, coaxing him to lay comfortably, and nuzzled his hairline with the broad flat of his nose.

“What happened?” he repeated, insistently, squeezing Pitch a little tighter – not enough to bruise him, though his paper-thin flesh tended to rip and tear terrifyingly easily, a quality that often made Koz far too worried to touch him. That usually lasted so long as it took Pitch to start wriggling on Koz’s lap, biting his lip while his cheeks seared red, maybe even a _“Kozzy!”_.

“Just the usual,” said Pitch unhelpfully.

Clearly, tonight was not going to be a night for heart-to-hearts.

“You know,” said Koz, contemplatively, “If you’re still having such awful nightmares, perhaps you’re not tired enough before you go to sleep.”

Pitch stiffened, the outrage pouring off him almost tangible. “Well _excuse_ me,” Pitch hissed venomously, “ _you’re_ the one who has some bizarre attachment to the sun, _I_ am a nocturnal creature!”

“Hmm,” teased Koz. “I need the sun to _see,_ Pitch, or would you rather I do everything by… feel?” As he spoke, his hand resting chastely over Pitch’s stomach lightly caressed down, tracing tender circles over his sharp hipbone.

The breath was lost somewhere in Pitch’s throat, escaping as a gasp that fell into a whine. Koz chuckled darkly, the vibrations rumbling through his chest, and Pitch felt his cheeks flame. “Don’t tease,” he managed, and Koz pulled away with another quiet laugh.

Focusing on controlling his breathing, Pitch allowed himself to contemplate about the true depth of hatred he had for stupid Kozmotis Pitchiner and his stupid body that _still_ left him stronger and faster than Pitch. “Bastard,” he muttered quietly, so Koz wouldn’t hear. He was mildly annoyed, not downright eager to spend the next three to four hours repenting for a single insult.

Nevertheless, there was still an echo of laughter in Koz’s husky voice when he rumbled, “Go to sleep, Pitch.”

Heaving a sigh, Pitch flipped onto his back and let Koz cover them both. Tenderly, Koz slung his arm over Pitch’s stomach; possessively, Pitch held his hand, interlocking deep tanned gold and shadowkissed grey.

It never took Koz long to fall asleep; it often seemed as if he laid his head down and was off immediately, a body too used to the rigours of military service not to grab at any chance of rest he could. This proved true now, quickly enough Koz’s breathing evened out, and the slight smile on his face pulled down into the quieter, rather more troubled expression he often wore when wandering the hollow haunts of his subconscious. Pitch watched his sleeping face, not for the first time wishing that everything he was didn’t hurt Koz quite so much.

He waited until Koz was deep enough in sleep that his grip relaxed and his body became limp and malleable, like a heavy puppet. Then, utilising all his skill, he carefully wriggled out from underneath his arm and climbed out of the bed, forming his shadow-robes as he went. Perching on the sill of the window, he glanced back one last time to engrave the soldier’s features in his mind.

Then he dropped, soundless, landing through the shadows several paces away into the trees. Rising a king, he spread his arms and soundlessly invoked the slurry of monsters that tumbled underneath his skin.

It was time to hunt.


End file.
